commerce essay

Leadership Style Depends Upon Organisational Culture Commerce Essay

Published: 23, March 2015

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This is the concluding chapter of the thesis. A long discussion has been done to validate the presence between organisational culture and leadership style. The sum and substance of this discussion is the confirmation that these two factors are ideally associated with each other to achieve organisational goals. However, there are certain cases in which the mentioned relationship takes various forms.

Described below are the forms of relationship between organisational culture and leadership style.

Leadership Style Depends upon Organisational Culture

Leader style is the dependent variable whereby organisational culture is independent variable. The top management devises the guidelines for corporate culture and explicitly mentions in the values that the managers will enjoy friendly relationships with the subordinates. They will listen to their ideas and work in close coordination with them. In case, employees are not able to perform well, the manager will try to identify the reason and take corrective action. Employees will be regarded as assets of the organisation and organisation will leave no stone unturned to boost their morale and productivity.

This philosophy is aligned with the practices of service sector. The employees can satisfy the customers only if they are satisfied hence the organisation needs to cater for their needs. Furthermore, the employees who directly interact with the customers are in better position to evaluate their needs and collect data about their feedback. So these first line employees are in the best position to participate in policy making procedure related to customer satisfaction. It is broad daylight that every commercial organisation works for profits and it leaves no stone unturned to maximise its profits. If it is proven that listening to employees who directly interact with customers can enhance profit ratio, the management will welcome voice of customer in the form of voice of employee. There will be directives from management that regular meetings should be held between the managers and the first line employees so that employees can express their ideas which need to be incorporated in the culture.

The other example in the same relationship is related to the practice where to management does not promote participative management and subordinates are taught to listen to the commands of senior and obey them at any cost. This type of culture and leadership is found in bureaucratic organisations particularly armed forces, police forces and security officers. They are hired to obey the senior regardless his commands are right or wrong. In this type of culture, any participation in the decision making may be considered as breach of employment agreement, misconduct and can lead to disciplinary action. The same teachings are passed on to manager at every level and the performance evaluation is also on the basis of obedience to the seniors.

If any individual serving at senior position does not adopt autocratic leadership style, it is assumed as non-professional behaviour at his part and he may be demoted to get training about how to act as senior. This conclusion may appear funny at a glance but it is truly practiced in armed forces and they are formally taught to stay at distance from juniors. Regardless sociable nature of seniors, they are professionally bound to stay rude and sarcastic.

Organisational Culture Depends upon Leadership Style

The literature review and industry examples demonstrate that there also exists a relationship between organisational culture and leadership style whereby leadership style is the independent variable and organisational culture is dependant upon it. There are leaders who are sociable in nature and focus on humanistic view more than production volume. Since they have concern for people and they consider them assets for the organisation, they believe that culture should promote the participation of employees in decision making and employees should be trained to express their views. The top management does not interact directly with customers and it is only the employees who know the story behind grievances and complains. An unsatisfied customer may spread bad word of mouth about the organisation and the cause of customer dissatisfaction can be an unsatisfied employee. He may disagree with the policies of boss or his attitude which does not let him act freely.

As evident from the examples when business organisations are setup by entrepreneurs who had a humble start, the culture they promote in their organisations are entirely different from the culture that is supported by kids of bureaucratic and family businessmen. Those who had humble start have gone all ups and downs of life and they recall their bad experiences which taught them the biggest lessons and became the reasons for their success. This is the reason, when they employ people, they keep in mind that subordinate of today can be a successful competitor of tomorrow if he has potential to grow. They invite participation from energetic employees so that their organisation can benefit from their innovative ideas. In this way, they also succeed in motivating the employees and they do not look for other opportunities for themselves.

There is another reason for caring attitude of the leaders. As they have passed through the tough circumstances, they understand the pain of others and try to reduce them in the possible manner. Mostly, the entrepreneurs are considerate and enjoy the company of their fellows who recall them of their past and old memories. They recall that they have also served as subordinates and there were people who were kind supervisors and there were few who were unkind. They try to adopt the kind actions which restored their faith in mankind and avoid the bad actions which had negative impact over their life and career.

Leaders following strong ethical conduct also try to have replacement plan for them in case they leave the organisation or take some long leave. They believe that organisation should not suffer if they are not active. Hence, arrangement of immediate subordinate as number 2 boss is encouraged in these organisations. There is always back up for all the employees and people enjoy doing the work of other employees to enrich their duties. It is a source of learning for them and they find it an interesting change to break the monotony of their job.

This type of relationship between organisational culture and leadership style is observed in small scale organisations or the organisations which have been in loss for quite sometime and revival plan is required. Usually, the people at top level management are changed so that new breed brings new ideas and people are motivated to play their role actively in the revival and development of organisation. The corporate culture is rich in such examples where the change of one person brings complete change in organisational culture and the profitability starts increasing. It is also observed that change of one person transforms high losses into profits as he introduces new culture. In this way, culture is dependant upon leadership style and the change in leadership style affects organisational culture as well.

This is the third implication of analysis conducted in the dissertation. This aspect shows that both organisational culture and leadership style determine organisational performance as these are inputs to organisational performance. In order to achieve the desired level of organisational performance, both organisational culture and leadership style are supposed to act as input variables and remain in harmony with each other. If they are not in harmony, the likely situation is depicted in the previous chapter. The employees intend to join unions and collective bargaining agents for their rights and organisations go bankrupt. It is a lose-lose situation whereby neither party enjoys positive consequences.

Organisational Culture and Leadership Style Dependant upon Goals

This is the four implication of relationship between organisational culture and leadership style whereby they both are dependant upon organisational goals. At times, organisational culture promotes participative leadership style but certain projects and goals discourage it. The criticality of goals breaks the links between the two variables under study and the gap is generated. The organisations claim of having open and participative culture but the practise are quite opposite and leaders to close to discussion. This situation is not favourable and leads to reduced loyalty with organisation as employees believe that their organisation has beautiful words only in vision and mission statements just to attract finances and customers. It has no concern for the employees and they are just like machines which has no emotions and feelings.

Recommendations

In the light of findings of this dissertation, following recommendations are made for the policy makers, the researchers in the field business administration and the organisational development experts.

The policy makers need to make the employees understand that whatsoever leadership style and organisational culture is adopted and promoted, there is certain reason behind it and the reason is most likely to achieve organisational goals in the best possible manner. The employees may disagree with management approach and have many complains about the culture and leadership style. It is the duty of management to devise such a system for employees which provide strong foundation for unleashing their potential and increase organisational productivity.

The literature is rich in narrating pros and cons of each leadership style and also offers certain situations in which a particular style is effective. However, it is important to mention that literature cannot cover each and every aspect that must be considered before adopting a particular style. In the light of this dissertation, it is recommended that leaders should adopt various styles depending upon the situation they face in everyday matters. Instead of adopting a single style in all situations, which becomes their identity and basis for their image in the mind of people around them, they should practise different styles at different occasions. It can help them in multiple ways. They can get the task done by the followers using combinations of powers they have and their identity will be a dynamic leader who is capable enough to control people through power and charisma.

Organisations should bring harmony between their culture and leadership style. In the modern organisations, there is strong need of having an open culture as the corporate world is subject to change anytime. The most appropriate culture in the modern 21st century is the one that promotes ethical conduct and openness to change. Culture is organizational level factor and leadership style can be described at both organisational and individual level. Organisations need to create harmony between the two factors so that desired results can be achieved effectively.

The dissertation is concluded that there exists relationship between organisational culture and leadership style and the management needs to develop their policies and plans keeping in view this relationship.

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